Dirty work in the Indian Ocean

By Peter E. Newell, World Socialism, May 1998

A small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean was of such strategic
importance that its whole population was expelled to make way for a
military base.

The island of Mauritius, which lies about 500 miles east of Madagascar
in the Indian Ocean, is only 40 miles from north to south and 25 miles
from east to west at its widest, yet with a population of over one
million is one of the most densely populated areas of the
world. Formerly a French colony it was ceded to Britain in 1814.

In 1964, Mauritius was granted self-government; and in March 1968 it
became fully independent, but on condition that the British government
was allowed to purchase from the newly-independent colony the Chagos
Archipelago, which lay 1,500 miles to the northeast, and which had
been previously administered from Mauritius. This was forced upon the
government of Mauritius despite a UN resolution, passed by the General
Assembly in December 1965, which called on Britain to take no
action which would dismember the territory of Mauritius or
violate its territorial integrity.

Mauritius, like other islands and territories in the Indian Ocean, was
all-important to Britain as well as France, South Africa and, later,
the United States because of the trade routes, and particularly the
Gulf oil tanker routes, possible off-shore oil deposits along the East
African coast, and the monitoring of Soviet shipping and
submarines. These countries were also much concerned about the spread
of what they called communist subversion in the area,
particularly among young people.

In the defence policy review of 1967, the British government decided
to move the naval communications station at HMS Highflyer in Sri Lanka
to the town of Vacoas in Mauritius, where it was renamed HMS
Mauritius. On obtaining independence in 1968, the Mauritian government
signed a defence treaty with Britain, allowing for the continued use
of HMS Mauritius. In exchange, Britain trained the island's
security forces.

For most of the time since independence, Mauritius has been governed
by the Labour Party either alone or in coalition with such parties as
the Parti Mauricien Social Democrat (PMSD) or, later, for a short
period in 1995, the Mouvement Militant Mauricien ((MMM), led by Paul
Berenger.

In December 1976, the hard-line anti-British, nationalist MMM, which
from 1970, had only held one seat in the Assembly, won 34 of the 70
seats, and became the largest single party. Only a rather shaky
coalition of the Labour and Social Democratic parties kept the MMM
from power. With the predictable collapse of this coalition, the MMM
achieved power. It joined the non-aligned block of Tanzania, India,
the Malagasy Republic (Madagascar) and the Seychelles; and called for
the demilitarisation of the Indian Ocean. Mauritius attempted, on a
number of occasions (the last time in 1991), to raise the issue of
returning the islands and atolls of the Chagos Archipelago to
Mauritius, but without success.

But why did Britain want to retain control of Chago Archipelago?
Officially named the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965 it is the
only British colony created since decolonisation after the Second
World War. In 1814, because of their importance astride the trade
routes to the East, the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were
annexed by Britain, and administered as a dependency of Mauritius
until 1965.

The population of the islands, when they became the British Indian
Ocean Territory in 1965, was around 1,500, of whom most lived on Diego
Garcia. They were the Ilois who were descended from slaves introduced
to work on the small copra plantations. Most were fifth generation
islanders. The new colony was given a flag, a Commissioner, a customs
office and a police station. A few Royal Marines were stationed on
Diego Garcia. A post office was established; and the Territory even
issued its own postage stamps.

The base

In 1966, however Britain signed a defence agreement with the
United States, leasing the British Indian Ocean Territory to America
for 50 years, with an option of a further 20 years. America did not,
of course, want the islands for their copra or their fish; and they
did not want to establish hotels for tourists. Far from it. They
particularly wanted Diego Garcia, with its huge lagoon, as an
intelligence, military and naval base and, later, as a nuclear weapons
depot and refuelling point for US bombers. As the British discovered
in the 19th century, whoever controlled the Chagos Archipelago
controlled the Indian Ocean.

There was only one problem for Britain: America required the islands
without the people who lived there. Britain had to get rid of them,
particularly from Diego Garcia. The evacuation, or to be more
accurate, the deportation, of the Ilois began in 1965 and was finally
completed before the end of 1972, despite UN articles IX and XIII
which state that no one should be subjected to arbitrary
exile. The British government assigned the job of resettling the
islanders to the Chagos-Agalega Company, coconut exporters and the
only employer on Diego Garcia. They were deported to Mauritius; and
the last few remaining islanders were told if you don't leave
you will not be fed. By 1972, the US Defense Department told
Congress that the islands are virtually uninhabited, and erection
of the base would thus cause no indigenous political problems.

In December 1974, a joint UK-US memorandum stated that there is no
native population on the islands; and a British Ministry of
Defence spokesman denied that this was a deliberate misrepresentation
by saying the there is nothing in our files about inhabitants or
about an evacuation. For Britain and America, the Ilois of the
British Indian Ocean Territory had become an unpeople.

In fact, they were dumped in Mauritius, in the words of a Minority
Rights Group report by John Madeley, without any workable
settlement; left in abject poverty, and given a tiny amount of
compensation on condition that they renounced their rights to return
to the islands. By 1980, only a very few owned any land or houses, and
40 percent still had no jobs. Not surprisingly, most still live in
Mauritius in poverty.

U.S. priorities

The United States Join Chiefs-of-Staff first sought the Chagos
Archipelago island of Diego Garcia as a base as early as 1959, and
persuaded the British to hive off the island, and other atolls and
islands in the archipelago, from Mauritius prior to independence. In
order to finance the base, the US Department of Defence established a
secret Polaris Trust Fund (as Britain was unable to pay for the
Polaris nuclear missiles for its submarines) to pay for the leased
base rights. The money from the Trust Fund was then deducted from
Britain's Polaris research and development costs, set at five
percent.

The first American contingent moved on to Diego Garcia in 1971; and
the first US project was to establish a naval Signals Intelligence
(SIGNIT) station to monitor radio signals in the Indian Ocean. With
British Royal Navy participation, a United States National Security
Group monitoring station was set up in 1972. It became a ground
control base for the US-Australian-British CLASSIC WIZARD Ocean
Surveillance Satellite System network for electronic satellites. Also
set up, in 1974, was a major GCHQ/NSA Signals Intelligence station. Of
the facilities, Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball observe: Not
only is Diego Garcia ideally situated for monitoring naval traffic in
the Indian Ocean, but during the 1970s, it also acquired many
functions previously performed by the NSA facility at Kagnew station,
at Asmara in Ethiopia (The Ties That Bind, Sydney, Australia,
p.205), abandoned because of the civil wars raging in that part of
Africa.

A second US-UK treaty, in 1972, sanctioned the limited naval
communications facility. A US airstrip and port facilities were
developed; and access to Diego Garcia was restricted to British and
American military personnel and civilian construction workers. In
1976, a third treaty regularised the construction of an anchorage,
airfield, support and supply elements and ancillary
services. Aircraft using Diego Garcia have included RAF Hawker
Siddely Nimrod MR2 marine reconnaissance aircraft, Lockheed P-3 Orion
transport aircraft, and USAAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers
capable of carrying nuclear devices stored on the island. During the
1991 war against Iraq, Diego Garcia was used as a refuelling point for
US bombers.

During the recent crisis, the British Indian Ocean Territory was once
again an important base for military operations. Yet more dirty work
in the Indian Ocean.